No. 114: Bad websites, mighty wind and tacos with Guinness sauce

March 18, 2016

TG it’s Friday: Hope you haven’t put the snow blower up on blocks. Bennett Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s is 65 today. Ben suffers from anosmia, the loss of smell and, as a result, taste. His work-around was putting ever-larger chunks of stuff in the ice cream.

A mighty initiative:The feds have designated an 81,000-acre area off of Long Island for commercial offshore wind development, pending environmental review.

Sore eye for sites: Riverhead and Huntington have the best town websites on Long Island, with most other municipalities receiving an F grade from the Empire Center’s SeeThroughNY project. (We’re in good company: 85 percent of sites across the state flunked.)

Not messing around: Now ensconced in the Broad Hollow Bioscience Park at Farmingdale State, biotech startup Codagenix has begun programming an end to the Zika virus, with a candidate vaccine likely ready for animal testing inside of six weeks.

Tying one on: It’s been a rough winter, but Amityville dock-reservation startup SlipFinder is looking to make a splash as the Northeast boating season returns. 200+ marinas so far and working hard on the rest of the coast.

Making waves: Swimming lessons and rent-a-lifeguard platform urSwim is getting its feet wet for 2016 with an app, new website and beefed-up staff and marketing. And founder Marina Montes has much bigger fish she wants to swim with after that.

A fine year in fintech: Great Neck-based lending platform Sharestates has topped $100 million in committed capital and returned $21 million to investors, who back small real estate deals and bridge loans. Not bad for its first 12 months, no?

Big meme on campus: LIU Start-Up NY tenant Saavyroo discovered there’s a lot more hay to be made by pivoting its digital education platform away from college students and into corporate HR offices.

Better late: SemiPro, the scheduling and stat-tracking app for amateur athletes that was supposed to go live last fall, will do so March 20. Worth the wait, cofounder Jason Le Goff tells Innovate’s Gregory Zeller.

Earnings, and lots of them: BioSpecifics, Long Island’s oldest startup, had a really big 2015.

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Top spots for women in tech: As measured by percentage of those currently working in the sector, include DC (39.5%), South Dakota (38.7), Mississippi (38.4), Wisconsin (37.2), Nebraska (37.2).

But not the bowls: iRobots’ just-out Braava mopping robot does bathrooms. $199 to $299, scrubber pads sold separately.

Not at all related: Google has decided to sell its robotics development company after deciding it would take years to bring anything useful to market. Toyota and Amazon are said to be interested.

Meals on wheels: UberEats, the food delivery arm of the unicorn ride-sharing service, has gone solo with its own app in LA, San Fran, Chicago and Houston, with more spots – including NYC – coming soon.

Millennial perk: Nearly 5,000 Fidelity Investments employees are joining the company’s new student loan repayment program, which can net the borrower up to $10,000 over five years of employment. This could be yuge.

True fact: Average U.S. student debt has climbed 60 percent in the last decade, to about $29,000.

Planet update: Human production of carbon-based greenhouse gases has been pretty much flat since 2013, the first time that’s happened outside a major economic downturn. In fact, world GDP was up 3+ percent. Still a long way to go, climate change studiers warn.

And: U.S. electricity consumption dropped 1.1 percent in 2015, for the fifth time in eight years, despite the addition of tens of millions of square feet of new buildings.

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For the calendar: The Boys and Girls Clubs of Suffolk County honor Standard Advisors prez Anthony Manetta, May 2, 6 to 9 p.m., the Meadow Club in Port Jefferson Station, tickets $125, contact Kirk Cronk at kcronk.bgcsuffolk@gmail.com.